Monday, July 12, 2010

my garden: the good, the bad, and the ugly

I find myself thinking too much about what is wrong in my garden. I think if I could just get the tomatoes to do what they are supposed to, I'd be happy. If I had to choose only grow one vegetable to grow, tomatoes would be my choice. And mine seem to be doomed from the start this year.

Blight is rearing its ugly head everywhere, and I've only brought in four scrawny tomatoes so far. Remember my single zucchini plant that I thought the bugs had killed?

I noticed there was still some life there a few days ago, trimmed off the dead leaves, and left it. We'll see what happens; my hopes are not high.

Because I'm a glutton for punishment and never tire of watching plants die, I planted another zucchini plant a few days ago. Just in case there's a chance the straw around the old plant has been harboring squash bugs and causing my problem, I'm not going to put straw around this one.

One outstanding success has been the Bodacious sweet corn. It's fast to mature and stays crisp and good for at least a week. There were only three short rows here, and I pulled the plants in one row because I've harvested all the ears of corn from it. I have two other plantings of this wonderful corn; the next crop is at the far left of the picture. Iris loves to help me in my garden.

It appears that the eggplants are going to be a roaring success, too. This is the first one I've picked, but there are dozens of smaller ones coming along. Green beans always do well for me, although I've had to pick them wet, which makes rust spots on them. Sometimes there's just no choice. We got an inch and a half of rain Sunday morning. The silly trumpet vine, which was supposed to take over my whole forty acres if I dared plant it, has once again suffered a setback: Something decided to eat the top leaves.

See? Hardly a leaf is left on the top part of the plant. I have sprayed it thoroughly; hopefully the pests will die, or at least go away. On another note, I am sorely missing our Bonnie-milk. That stuff from the store is awful, in comparison.

7 comments:

Because of our unseasonably cold weather and rain, our plants are NOT doing well at all. Like you, tomatoes are the main ones that I care about; homegrown tomatoes are the best. Last year we had lovely ones from July through October. But this summer, we'll be lucky to get any! Our flowers are also suffering!

I just had my first fresh green beans of the season this past weekend and fixed them almost the same as you did. They were delicious. I'm partial to the yellow summer squash and had that too. Too bad about those tomatoes. Hope you manage to get more.

Our peas aren't doing so well... I never got around to stringing them up so it's all my fault. I know I couldn't pick just one vegetable to grow though in years past when I worked full time before the babies were born I usually did plant just tomatoes as that was all I could keep up with. We were expecting green peppers too and up came all banana peppers LOL. Lisa in KY